Hps and throughout question

Hello everyone!

Now I've just started 'raiding' in the LFR (obviously since it's only been out for two weeks..) and I am a bit worried about my performance as a healer. Now, I know, the LFR doesn't demand much of a performance from you. But, I like to be the best I can with my current gear. And after raiding as dps for almost a year I tend to watch the hps meters quite alot.

And that leads me to my issue. Almost on every fight I tend to be either last or second to last counting healing done. It doesn't really matter the spec or class I go up against, it's always the same.

Honestly though, people usually don't die from lack of healing. But it is annoying to always be in the bottom half of the meters.

So I read up on various forums. And everyone keeps going on and on about their amazing hps. Reaching numbers as high as 25k.. Which is about double the hps from my best fights. I can, if I really go in for it reach numbers at around 12k hps, while other players in the raid reach numbers as high as 18-20k....

My ilvl is at around 376, so nothing fancy at all. But still? Shouldn't I be able to put out more out of my spec? Playing an atonement speced disc priest atm.

Any help or advice is appreciated. Although I understand that it is difficult without any logs or something. But I simply don't have any since I only do some LFR's.

And well, I guess my question is more or less: How good or bad am I performing? Should I expect a whole lot more out of my character and myself at this time?

Without actually looking at a healing log of yours all I can really say is aoe heal harder. By now you should know when aoe dmg is coming in the fights so be ready to pop archangel and PI(depending on the length of the aoe either use them both at the same time or one after the other) keep PoM on cd, shield your tanks to keep rapture up and spam PoH while cycling through the groups. That's really all I can advise and once you get the hang of that you should see your HPS go up. Also just make sure you are always casting something, WS should be up 100% on the tanks always send out pom on CD to one of the tanks, renew while moving, ect.

Another note I would like to add is that HPS isn't everything. I know a lot of people post it ALL the time on the forums and stuff and its actually pretty annoying but it doesn't mean much. Sure a Paladin can spam holy radiance for 30 seconds, 90% of it overhealing, go OOM, then stand there doing jack for 2 minutes and brag about his 20k hps at the end of the fight. While a better healer might only finish with 15k HPS but had mana the entire fight and reacted to incoming dmg effectively/efficiently with almost no overhealing. See what I'm getting at? HPS simply tells one side of the story.

i myself havea 384 dis priest and there are a few obvious things u need 2 b doing. such as keeping poh on cd and penance along with stacking pom b4 the pull up to 50k. aswell as using ur bubble on both tanks one managing ur rapture so u dont oom. although i am not sure that u mastery stacked u also want to cycle pom while the fight is going o to lighten the load on other healers while keeping mana in mind. make SURE to use your 8 min cd i member the name but its a huge aoe along with power infusion on urslef (if the dmg incoming is to much) unless your dps is struggling. And for my final tip use the crack fiend b4 u need it so it will b up later in the fight for maximum mana regen, and ur hym on the same concept for u and other healer. sorry if my english is bad i speak german more nowadays. O 1 last thing it is good 2 keep in mind that in 25 ur not going 2 b top heals although in 10man u will b much higher considering 25 disc is ment for tank heals imo

---------- Post added 2011-12-11 at 02:48 PM ----------

do listen 2 whicker he knows whats up =] and dont u dare oom yourself like that scrub pally

As Disc - Shield Tank and the PoH each group continuously. Rinse and Repeat.
As Holy - Renew and PoM Tank, Holy Word: Sanctuary on CD, CoH on CD (if you have the mana for it) especially after a burst damage, and PoH continuously each group.

Well ofc, I dont focus entirely on hps alone. I try to be efficient rather than having a huge hps. It might be because I am mainly doing lfr's I am noticing this since people usually go for 30k hps and 90% overhealing done while I'd rather do 12k hps and 20% overhealing. And btw, how much overhealing is generally acceptable for a healer? What would you call a 'decent' performance overhealing-wise?

this makes the warning bell ring for me.
while i dont have anything against atonement build, i hear really often about people using it in not necessary most efficient way.

is there a chance that you use smites and holy fire as healing tools and actually try to heal with atonement, or do you use it only to keep stacks up to pop wings in certain moments of the fight?

do you remember what are your top 3-5 spells on healing done meters from certain fights?

never tried that, but i think you can record and upload logs from lfr? if so, it would be very helpful. would show where the overhealing comes from (which spells exactly) and which spells you use in what proportion. which would be great base to start discussing gear stats

as for the overhealing, i dont think that there is a straight answer for it. for example you could expect druids to always have it high due to how hots work.
in my opinion there is no issue with healer who has really high output and really high overhealing (as long as he doesnt run oom in mid fight), issues start when someone with low output has high overhealing. also very important is where the overhealing comes from - is it overhealing from stacking da via poh or is it overhealing from blind shields spam when raid isnt going to take damage, or smites spam when only ranged take damage - thats why logs would be so great!

HPS in LFR are never going to be super high due to the lower amount of damage incoming and the fact that 6 healers is way too many for it so everyone is fighting over heal targets. In general though the tanks will mostly be taken care of so if you see them getting hit hard just shield them and move on as chances are all 5 other healers will be mid casting a large heal, what I normally do is cast a single PoH per group one after the other then repeat maybe do the odd penance or shield on lower health players.

this makes the warning bell ring for me.
while i dont have anything against atonement build, i hear really often about people using it in not necessary most efficient way.

is there a chance that you use smites and holy fire as healing tools and actually try to heal with atonement, or do you use it only to keep stacks up to pop wings in certain moments of the fight?

I kind of do both depending on the encounter etc. If there's steady but slow damage comming out I usually keep penance on cd aswell as PoM while using smite and HF as fillers. While using wings, or, if I know wings won't be off CD before the next real heavy burst I save them for that.

Originally Posted by babylon

do you remember what are your top 3-5 spells on healing done meters from certain fights?

Uhm.... I kind of don't. But If I'd make an evaluated guess I'd say PoH is probably at the top. And then I guess it depends on the encounter. I do remember having atonement second followed by penance/PoM.

---------- Post added 2011-12-12 at 06:18 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Posix

Is your HPS including Absorbs?

This actually never occured to me. I am using Skada atm while looking at the 'Healing' tab. I'll check tonight if I can find a good answer to this.

Uhm.... I kind of don't. But If I'd make an evaluated guess I'd say PoH is probably at the top. And then I guess it depends on the encounter. I do remember having atonement second followed by penance/PoM.[COLOR="red"]

You're relying on Smite/HF far too much. Consider that a Smite attonement heal is on par with Heal and not Greater Heal. It's horrible HPS
Atonement is a means to an end, to stack Evangelism and use Archangel for AoE spamming. Don't use it to heal unless you're deep within a lull period and everyone is already topped off.

If you want more HpS use less atonement (just enough to keep AA). If you don't care about big numbers then atonement can be perfectly fine to heal (mostly tanks) in LFR, but you need to know when to stop using it and switch to other spells. If you do there is nothing wrong in having atonement your number one healing spell in a log or having 90% overheal or something - as long as you did your job at the same time, but if you did not then those are places to start looking at for improvement.

Well I try to use atonement only when the damage isn't high enough to care for other heals. And, as someone above said this could be a syndrome only happening in the LFR with six healers and quite low damage.

This is the answer right here, skada's healing tab only shows healing not absorbs but it does have a tab for healing and absorbs.

skada healing+absorbs is far from being any accurate, it is still guessing.

i recommend recount, which uses data from combat log. if anyone dissagree, please do make the test - take discipline priest and any other healer(s) to an encounter, run recount, run skada and record logs. see wol then, it will be almost on pair with recount output, not even similar to skada output.

Healing metres actually are saying tottaly different things about a fight from dps ones.

Actually the way i use them in our raiding group. In case there are 3 healers in a fight and they are all on par in healing done it means that fight at that given
time (gear of the raid, practice on the fight) needs 3 healers for your group to kill the boss.
If you see 2 healers really toping the meters and the third having a big gap from them then its that time where everyone in the raid has the gear and knows the fight that it is safe to run it with 2 healers and make the 3rd change to his dps spec.
But that is for guild runs actually.

now on overhealing ones
Everything that uses hots will overheal eventually.If you check your overhealing done i bet its from the glyphed poh aswell. since that hot actually most of the time only overheals.

So dont get so anxious about healing meters at all. its best if you are the healer that will save the fight with well placed heals and shields by mastering the fight and the damage expected than the one that tops meters and looks like a jerk shouting OOM in a middle of a big fight.

skada healing+absorbs is far from being any accurate, it is still guessing.

i recommend recount, which uses data from combat log. if anyone dissagree, please do make the test - take discipline priest and any other healer(s) to an encounter, run recount, run skada and record logs. see wol then, it will be almost on pair with recount output, not even similar to skada output.

Well I wont swap to recount. It doesn't really matter if it is accurate to how much hps you are really putting out, aslong as the difference between the players are.

Well, when the dmg is as low as it generally is in LFR the more aggressive healers will get the most healing done.

Meaning if everyone drops 20% health, just snipe some PoHs instead of waiting for the shaman/druid/holy etc AoEs to heal them.
Not really the best strategy to use in the long run, but it will make you look better on the meters :P